Social Media – The Crime Reporthttps://thecrimereport.org
Your Complete Criminal Justice ResourceMon, 19 Mar 2018 14:27:33 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4D.C. Police Chief Blocks Two Twitter Followershttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/23/d-c-police-chief-blocks-two-twitter-followers/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/23/d-c-police-chief-blocks-two-twitter-followers/#respondFri, 23 Feb 2018 07:24:44 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=248144Brendan Orsinger does not like Washington, D.C.’s police chief. He has made his views clear on Twitter, writing “Peter Newsham is a liability to this city,” and calling officers “a bunch of violent bullies.” Newsham, citing tweets he calls “cruel and nasty” — and sometimes inaccurate — blocked his 36-year-old social-media antagonist, and at least one other activist on Twitter. They can no longer follow @ChiefNewsham or see the chief’s tweets, the Washington Post reports. Advocates of open government argue that Newsham, along with other elected and appointed public officials across the U.S. who have weeded out critics on social media, are running afoul of the First Amendment. Hitting Twitter’s “block” key, they argue, is akin to government cracking down on speakers in what has become the nation’s new town square.

The District’s police chief has joined the legal debate over the intersection of social media, transparent government and communicating with the public. The Supreme Court could end up deciding whether the First Amendment applies to public forums run by government officials on the Internet. The American Civil Liberties Union took Maryland’s governor to court over the issue, and another group is suing President Trump. In Virginia, a federal judge ruled that the chairman of the Board of Supervisors in Loudoun County, Va., violated the U.S. Constitution by blocking a critical Facebook follower for 12 hours. That decision is being appealed. Newsham set up his @ChiefNewsham Twitter account in 2016 and had posted nearly 400 times as of Friday . He has a modest 1,294 followers.. The account is separate from the main police Twitter account, @DCPoliceDept, which has more than 200,000 followers and sends alerts on shootings, robberies, carjackings, missing persons, as well videos of crime suspects who are being sought. No one has been blocked from that account.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/23/d-c-police-chief-blocks-two-twitter-followers/feed/0Ex-Sheriff Clarke Wins Case Over Facebook Postshttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/01/23/ex-sheriff-clarke-wins-case-over-facebook-posts/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/01/23/ex-sheriff-clarke-wins-case-over-facebook-posts/#respondTue, 23 Jan 2018 07:39:16 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=236640A federal jury sided with former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke in a dispute over whether Clarke’s Facebook posts violated the free speech rights of a man who had shared a flight with Clarke, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Dan Black, 25, was detained by deputies when the flight landed in Milwaukee last year because he had shaken his head at Clarke before the plane left Dallas. After Black filed a complaint over how he was treated, Clarke put up two posts on the agency’s Facebook page that Black found threatening and intimidating. Black’s lawsuit claimed the posts dissuaded him from ever again seeking redress of a grievance against a powerful government official.

The jury found Black had failed to prove the posts suppressed his willingness to make such a complaint in the future. Black’s attorney, Anne Sulton, asked jurors to impose punitive damages because Clarke “believes he’s unaccountable, above the law.” Clarke did not appear at the trial. The county would have been liable for paying any damages the jury might have awarded Black. Defense attorney Charles Bohl argued that Black and Clarke had a simple “internet spat” with no civil rights implications. He said Black himself was the first to mention the airport incident on social media, seemingly mocking Clarke in one tweet, and gave multiple TV news interviews about his encounter with Clarke and Clarke’s reactions. “Did the posts chill his exercise of his First Amendment rights?” Bohl asked. “It’s a resounding no. He exercised those rights abundantly.” Black testified he hasn’t been able to land a new job because any internet search of his name turns up almost nothing but the dispute with Clarke.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/01/23/ex-sheriff-clarke-wins-case-over-facebook-posts/feed/0States Losing Fight Against Mugshot Websiteshttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/12/11/states-losing-fight-against-mugshot-websites/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/12/11/states-losing-fight-against-mugshot-websites/#respondMon, 11 Dec 2017 12:48:34 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=220672At a time when personal information can end up online and rocket around the globe in seconds, the 78 million Americans with criminal records are a rich target for websites that collect mugshots from police departments and sheriffs’ offices and charge hundreds or thousands of dollars to have the photos removed. Even people who are arrested but never charged have their photos on the sites, Stateline reports. Since their business practices came to light in 2013, the websites have drawn the ire of state lawmakers who criticize them as exploitative. Eighteen states have passed laws designed to crack down on mugshot websites by banning them from charging removal fees, stemming the flow of mugshots from law enforcement agencies, or requiring that the postings be accurate.

The laws have been largely ineffective in providing relief to those whose photos are featured on the sites. “They haven’t worked,” said Eumi Lee, a law professor at University of California-Hastings who has spent three years studying the effectiveness of mugshot laws for legal review article. Mugshot websites have ignored the laws or quickly figured out ways to work around them. In places where people can no longer pay to have photos deleted, they often have no remedy to get them removed. Mugshots.com, one of the biggest purveyors, has entries for nearly 30 million people. A Stateline review found evidence of the laws’ inadequacy. In most states, mugshots are a public record. The companies can scrape the photos from law enforcement websites, uploading them to their own sites in hours, or put in public information requests to get others. When they’ve been sued, the sites’ attorneys argue that their work is protected under the First Amendment. Among those who defend putting mugshots online are newspaper publishers, whose sites often feature local mugshots in crime coverage.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/12/11/states-losing-fight-against-mugshot-websites/feed/0Warrant for Photo of Teen’s Genitals Violated Rightshttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/12/07/court-nixes-warrant-to-photograph-teens-genitalia/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/12/07/court-nixes-warrant-to-photograph-teens-genitalia/#respondThu, 07 Dec 2017 06:27:57 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=218915The teenage “sexting” case that attracted national attention in 2014 is enshrined in federal case law, the Washington Post reports. A police detective who obtained search warrants to photograph a teenager’s genitalia violated the teen’s Fourth Amendment right not to be unreasonably searched, a federal appeals court ruled, reviving a lawsuit against the detective that had been thrown out by a lower court. A dissenting judge wrote that the ruling could cause police to be less aggressive in their investigations. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit came in the case of Trey Sims, who was 17 when police in Manassas, Va., and prosecutors in Prince William County, Va., began investigating him for sending a video of his genitalia to his 15-year-old girlfriend by text message. Manassas Detective David Abbott claimed that he was instructed to obtain the warrants by prosecutor Claiborne Richardson. Sims sued both.

Richardson, still a prosecutor, is a candidate for a Virginia judgeship. Abbott committed suicide in 2015 as police attempted to arrest him on charges of molesting two boys. His estate is a defendant in the suit; Richardson was dismissed from the case by U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton. Abbott and Richardson obtained search warrants, and Abbott sought photos of Sims’s erect penis, to compare with the video sent to his girlfriend. The issue of how to handle “sexting,” particularly between consenting teens, continues to vex authorities, with some saying that it shouldn’t be treated as a crime. Sims was charged in juvenile court with the equivalent of a felony. A judge said there was enough evidence to convict Sims, but eventually dismissed the case after he completed a year of probation.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/12/07/court-nixes-warrant-to-photograph-teens-genitalia/feed/0Facebook Called an ‘Accelerant’ to Violent Crimehttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/11/27/facebook-called-an-accelerant-to-violent-crime/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/11/27/facebook-called-an-accelerant-to-violent-crime/#respondMon, 27 Nov 2017 13:32:06 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=215147Facebook and other platforms have emerged as new frontiers in the fight against violent crime that continues to grip major cities, the Wall Street Journal reports. In Chicago, which is on track to have more than 600 murders for the second year in a row, community leaders and police say the immediacy of these platforms has played a major role in escalating disputes, while also providing more evidence that can aid arrests and convictions. “It pours an accelerant on what was already there,” said Eric Sussman, the first assistant state’s attorney for Chicago’s Cook County.

The Chicago Police Department and prosecutors say they are seeing a rise in the number of “petty conflicts that have leapt from social media platforms to violent crimes on the street.” A Wall Street Journal tally found at least 100 cases nationally where an act of violence was streamed on just one of these platforms, Facebook Live, since it was launched in early 2016. “Unfortunately, in too many instances, these conflicts are resolved with a gun,” said a Chicago police spokesman. Prosecutors and law enforcement agencies in other cities, including Dallas and Wilmington, De., say social media mirrors and contributes to gang-related behavior on their streets. Police in Dallas this year attributed a string of drive-by shootings to incidents in which one gang challenged another and posted their location on Facebook or Instagram, prompting an act of violence.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/11/27/facebook-called-an-accelerant-to-violent-crime/feed/0NY Columnist Credited in Charlottesville Beating Arrestshttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/09/01/ny-columnist-credited-in-charlottesville-beating-arrests/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/09/01/ny-columnist-credited-in-charlottesville-beating-arrests/#respondFri, 01 Sep 2017 10:20:22 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=189706Shaun King, who recently left his position as a New York Daily News columnist, deserves credit for identifying two of the white assailants who attacked a black man named DeAndre Harris in a parking garage during the Aug. 12 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., reports the Washington Post. Video showed Harris, 20, being set upon by six men who kicked him to the ground and pummeled him with what appeared to be wooden sticks and a large board. Harris sustained a spinal injury and a deep head laceration that required 10 staples, according to his Philadelphia-based attorney, S. Lee Merritt. Over the next few days, King took it upon himself to do what law enforcement agencies apparently weren’t doing: identify the six attackers so they could be arrested.

King, now a writer in residence at Harvard Law School, scoured the Web to match old photos of the attackers with images from the Charlottesville fight. He searched social media for associates of the men who could confirm their names. As of Thursday, King was credited with identifying two of the alleged assailants: Daniel P. Borden, 18, of Ohio and Alex Michael Ramos, 33, of Georgia. Both were arrested and charged with malicious wounding. King is still trying to identify the others, but he said local and state police and the FBI told him most of their information is coming from his social media posts. “Something had me thinking that the FBI was so sophisticated, that they were running these photos through databases,” King said. “But they openly said that the only guys they knew were the two guys I had identified. My thought was, ‘This can’t be real.'”

Online vigilantism has been around since the early days of the internet, notes the New York Times. So has “doxxing” — originally a slang term among hackers for obtaining and posting private documents about an individual, usually a rival or enemy. To hackers, who prized their anonymity, it was considered a cruel attack. But doxxing has emerged from subculture websites like 4Chan and Reddit to become something of a mainstream phenomenon since a white supremacist march on Charlottesville, Va., earlier this month. “Originally it was little black-hat hacker crews who were at war with each other — they would take docs, like documents, from a competing group and then claim they had ‘dox’ on them,” said Gabriella Coleman, author of a book about the hacker vigilante group Anonymous. “There was this idea that you were veiled and then uncovered.”

Now the online hunt to reveal extremists has raised concerns about unintended consequences, or even collateral damage. A few individuals have been misidentified, including a professor from Arkansas who was wrongly accused of participating in the neo-Nazi march. The ethics — and even the definition — of doxxing is murky. It is the dissemination of often publicly available information. And are you really doxxing a person if he or she is marching on a public street, face revealed and apparently proud? It is not as though they are hiding their identities.

In June, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in Packingham v. North Carolina that invalidated a state law banning registered sex offenders from accessing websites that could facilitate direct communications with minors.

While the majority opinion and concurrence seems grounded in—and specific to—sex offender restrictions, the evolving communications technology that operates in cyberspace today suggests that the ruling will have an impact on attempts to restrict web access for all criminal defendants in state or federal courts.

Lester Packingham pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl when he was 21. Eight years after his conviction, Lester bragged on Facebook about a happy day in traffic court, using the screen name of J.R. Gerrard, and exclaiming:

“Man God is Good! How about I got so much favor they dismissed the ticket before court even started? No fine, no court cost, no nothing spent…Praise be to GOD, WOW! Thanks JESUS!”

A police officer tracked down court records, obtained a search warrant, and correctly identified “J.R.” as an alias for Lester Packingham.

He was subsequently convicted of violating a North Carolina statute that prohibits convicted sex offenders from using social-networking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter. The unanimous Supreme Court opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, reversed the conviction on First Amendment free speech grounds.

According to Kennedy, the North Carolina statute was too broad, in that it effectively prevented sex offenders from accessing the “vast democratic forums of the Internet” that serve as principal sources of information on employment opportunities, current events, and opinions or ideas that have no connection to criminal plans or the potential victimization of children.

Justice Samuel Alito agreed, pointing out that the statute’s definition of social networking sites would in effect encompass even Amazon, the Washington Post, and WebMD—all of whom provide opportunities for visitors to connect with other users. In his concurrence, he noted that states were entitled to draft narrower, and constitutionally valid, restrictions because of their legitimate interest in thwarting recidivist sex offenders.

But it’s not at all clear that a state legislature can follow Justice Alito’s guidance and sufficiently narrow its sights on offender/child communication to the point where the law has its intended effect, while still passing constitutional muster.

There may undoubtedly be pedophiliac versions of Tinder or Match.com which could fit the definitions of sites where access can be restricted without harm to First Amendment protections. But today’s internet does not lend itself easily to such narrow definitions. Even mainstream sites like The Washington Post or Amazon could be considered portals that might be compromised by criminal behavior. Such sites encourage the kind of user engagement that, while they may not be fairly called a “chat room,” is close enough to a “bulletin board” to bring us right back into the perils of North Carolina’s now-invalidated law.

And what of the defendants facing internet restrictions for reasons other than molestation or child pornography violations?

There are numerous defendants who are bounced off the internet as a condition of probation or supervised release because the internet was an instrumentality for their crimes. For instance, internet-based fraud, identity theft, or using pro-terrorism websites to construct weapons or murderous plans, are all offenses that have led judges to impose some form of web restriction on defendants.

Web restrictions for these defendants are now also in play in a post-Packingham world.

The intention of the judges seeking to restrict web access in these cases is understandable. They want to remove potential tools of victimization from the hands of convicted criminals. But the Supreme Court’s recognition of the vast, evolving and multi-purpose nature of today’s internet has brought legitimate First Amendment considerations into almost every web-limiting decision.

We may soon see that the only web restrictions that are lawful and practically enforceable are ones stemming from the defendant volunteering to withdraw from the net—likely because of the perceived trade-off between more time in jail and the judge’s comfort level as to assurances that re-victimization by internet will not occur when the defendant is returned to the community.

In the meantime, Packingham may shape the battlefield when web-restricted defendants are alleged to have violated parole or probation by visiting websites. Judges facing considerably more ominous violations than Lester’s on-line celebration of beating a traffic ticket may find that website-messaging technology and powerful First Amendment concerns leave them with little recourse but to ban outright all attempts to restrict access.

To some, this may be an uncomfortably high price to pay for web freedom.

On a practical level, technology has largely out-paced the now-antiquated view that the Internet can be surgically sliced into “safe” websites and “unsafe” ones, and the unanimity of Packingham suggests that the Court did not struggle much with its rationale.

While the absence of web-restrictions would lead to the release of offenders to the community with an unavoidable dose of discomfort with their access to computers, it may also result in judges finding themselves increasingly satisfied with lengthy prison terms because of the lack of a satisfactory, less-restrictive condition of supervised release.

So, somewhat ironically, the next Lester Packingham may find himself spending more time in prison because of his inability to convince a judge that self-restraint on the computer can adequately replace judicially-imposed restraints.

Perhaps the safer bet here is on technology – that some program, some application, or some web-alternative pops up in the future and revitalizes the possibility of judges restricting web access without violating First Amendment rights.

James Trusty

James Trusty is a Member at Ifrah Law, PLLC, where he leads the White Collar Practice Group. He was formerly Chief of the Department of Justice Organized Crime & Gang Section, and has spent 27 years serving as either a local or federal prosecutor. He also teaches criminal Justice courses at University of Maryland (Shady Grove). He welcomes comments from readers.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/08/17/do-criminal-defendants-have-web-rights/feed/515-Month Prison Term in MA Social Media Suicide Casehttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/08/03/15-month-prison-term-in-ma-social-media-suicide-case/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/08/03/15-month-prison-term-in-ma-social-media-suicide-case/#respondFri, 04 Aug 2017 01:07:01 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=181723Michelle Carter was sentenced to 15 months in prison in Massachusetts for convincing her high school boyfriend to kill himself through a series of texts and phone calls, the Boston Herald reports. In June, Moniz found Carter, now 20, guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the death of Conrad Roy III. Carter will remain free while she pursues an appeal. “I believe she should be kept far away from society,” wrote Kim Bozzi, Roy’s aunt, in a victim impact statement. David Carter, Michelle’s father, begged for probation and “continued counselling.” Prosecutors sought between seven and 12 years incarceration. Carter’s defense attorney, Joseph Cataldo, asked for a sentence of five years supervised probation with conditions including mental-health counseling.

Moniz found that Carter caused Roy, 18, to kill himself even though she was miles away and communicating through calls and texts. Carter’s relationship with Roy was almost entirely virtual. Prosecutors showed that the two teens would regularly talk about suicide through texts, and in the days leading up to Roy’s death, Carter encouraged him to go through with it. In 2014, he took his own life in a Kmart parking lot by filling his truck with deadly carbon monoxide gas. Before he died, Roy left the truck. At that point, Carter and Roy spoke on the phone and she told him to get back in – and he did. Moniz said that moment was what led him to find Carter guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The American Civil Liberties Union contended that Carter’s conviction was improper because “it exceeds the limits of our criminal laws and violates free speech protections guaranteed by the Massachusetts and U.S. Constitutions.”

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/08/03/15-month-prison-term-in-ma-social-media-suicide-case/feed/0Tech Firms Back Facebook In Court Access Fighthttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/07/17/tech-firms-back-facebook-in-court-access-fight/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/07/17/tech-firms-back-facebook-in-court-access-fight/#respondMon, 17 Jul 2017 09:50:22 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=176736Major technology companies and civil liberties groups have joined Facebook in a closed courtroom battle over secret government access to social media records, the Washington Post reports. Facebook is fighting a court order that prohibits it from letting users know when law enforcement investigators ask to search their political communications. Facebook contends that the ban tramples First Amendment protections of the company and individuals. Most of the details of the Washington, D.C., case are under wraps, but the timing of the investigation, and references in public court documents, suggest the search warrants relate to demonstrations during President Trump’s inauguration. More than 200 people were detained and many have been charged with felony rioting in the Jan. 20 protests that injured police and damaged property.

The Facebook battle in the D.C. Court of Appeals is similar to challenges throughout the U.S. from technology companies objecting to how the government seeks access to Internet data in emails or social media accounts during criminal investigations. The D.C. case has implications for the First Amendment rights of Facebook users and others who are politically active online. Prosecutors are trying to prevent Facebook from giving users a heads up about search warrants connected to an investigation into potential felony charges. The wording of the search warrants at the crux of the case seek “all contents of communications, identifying information and other records” and designate three accounts for a three-month period in each request. A D.C. Superior Court judge denied Facebook’s request to get rid of the gag order and directed the company to turn over the records covered by the search warrants to law enforcement. Facebook appealed.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/07/17/tech-firms-back-facebook-in-court-access-fight/feed/0Should Police Shame Suspects on Facebook?https://thecrimereport.org/2017/07/14/should-police-shame-suspects-on-facebook/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/07/14/should-police-shame-suspects-on-facebook/#respondFri, 14 Jul 2017 09:17:38 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=175787Police departments increasingly are using Facebook to inform the community about what they’re doing and who they’re arresting, sometimes even adding humor to the mix. Civil rights advocates say posting mugshots and written, pejorative descriptions of suspects amounts to public shaming of people who have not yet been convicted, the Associated Press reports. “It makes them the butt of a joke on what for many people is probably their worst day,” said Arisha Hatch of Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy organization that got Philadelphia police to stop posting mugshots on its Special Operations Facebook page. “The impact of having a mugshot posted on social media for all to see can be incredibly damaging for folks that are parents, for folks that have jobs, for folks that have lives they have to come back to,” she said.

Traditionally, police have made mugshots and details on suspects available to journalists for publication, and journalists selectively choose to write stories and use mugshots based on the severity or unusual nature of the crime. Many crimes don’t get any coverage. In some communities, posting mugshots and glib write-ups has created a backlash. In South Burlington, Vt., Police Chief Trevor Whipple was in favor of posting mugshots, but he started noticing disparaging comments about everything from suspects’ hairstyles to their intelligence. The department stopped the practice after about a year. “Do we want to use our Facebook page to shame people?” Whipple said. “Legally, there’s no problem — all mugshots are public — but the question became, is this what we want to do?”

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/07/14/should-police-shame-suspects-on-facebook/feed/0Justices Void NC Law On Sex Offenders, Social Mediahttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/06/19/justices-void-nc-law-on-sex-offenders-social-media/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/06/19/justices-void-nc-law-on-sex-offenders-social-media/#respondMon, 19 Jun 2017 15:00:03 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=168734The Supreme Court today struck down a North Carolina law making it a felony for a registered sex offender “to access a commercial social networking Web site where the sex offender knows that the site permits minor children to become members or to create or maintain personal Web pages.” The court said the statute impermissibly restricts lawful speech in violation of the First Amendment. The appeal was brought by Lester Gerard Packingham, who as a 21-year-old college student had sex with a 13-year-old girl. He later was accused of violating the state law on social media when he contested a traffic ticket in court and wrote on his Facebook page, “Man God is Good! How about I got so much favor they dismissed the ticket before court even started? No fine, no court cost, no nothing spent. . . . . .Praise be to GOD, WOW!”

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court that, “To foreclose access to social media altogether is to prevent the user from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights. It is unsettling to suggest that only a limited set of websites can be used even by persons who have completed their sentences.” Justice Samuel Alito, writing for three justices who concurred in the case’s result but did not join Kennedy’s opinion, said that Kennedy “is unable to resist musings that seem to equate the entirety of the internet with public streets and parks … this language is bound to be interpreted by some to mean that the states are largely powerless to restrict even the most dangerous sexual predators from visiting any internet sites, including, for example, teenage dating sites and sites designed to permit minors to discuss personal problems with their peers.” New Justice Neil Gorsuch did not take part in the case, which was argued before he joined the court.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/06/19/justices-void-nc-law-on-sex-offenders-social-media/feed/0MA Woman Convicted in Texts Leading to Friend’s Suicidehttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/06/16/ma-woman-convicted-of-texts-leading-to-friends-suicide/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/06/16/ma-woman-convicted-of-texts-leading-to-friends-suicide/#respondFri, 16 Jun 2017 15:35:47 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=167922Michelle Carter, the Massachusetts woman who urged her high school boyfriend to kill himself through a series of texts and phone calls, was responsible for his death, declared a judge who today found her guilty of involuntary manslaughter, the Boston Herald reports. Carter stood trial for the 2014 death of Conrad Roy III, then 18. The verdict from Judge Lawrence Moniz of Taunton, Ma., in the landmark case, which drew national attention, may help reshape criminal law relating to virtual communications. Carter, who was 17 at the time of Roy’s death, did not take the stand in her own defense. In the days leading up to his death, Carter repeatedly encouraged Roy to kill himself through texts and phone calls.

In one message that prosecutors framed as an admission, Carter texted a classmate that she could have stopped Roy’s suicide but instead told him to finish the job. “Sam, his death is my fault like honestly I could have stopped him,” Carter texted on Sept. 15, 2014. “I was on the phone with him and he got out of the car because it was working and he got scared and I (expletive) told him to get back in Sam because I knew he would do it all over again the next day and I couldn’t have him live the way he was living anymore I couldn’t do it I wouldn’t let him.” Prosecutors argued that Carter’s texts and calls to Roy on the night of July 12, 2014, were enough to make her “virtually present” in a criminal context. Prosecutors successfully argued that in this new digital age crimes can be committed even when someone isn’t physically near a victim.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/06/16/ma-woman-convicted-of-texts-leading-to-friends-suicide/feed/0Is Twitter the Leading Edge of Predicting Chicago Violence?https://thecrimereport.org/2017/05/03/is-twitter-the-leading-edge-of-predicting-chicago-violence/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/05/03/is-twitter-the-leading-edge-of-predicting-chicago-violence/#respondWed, 03 May 2017 14:46:42 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=154743Is a careful reading of Twitter the key to predicting future gun violence in Chicago and elsewhere? Desmond Patton, a Columbia University professor, thinks so. He writes for The Trace, “For the past four years, I have examined the relationship between Twitter activity and gang violence among young people who live in Chicago…I work with social workers to accurately decode what teens are saying, and collaborate with data scientists to detect patterns in social media communication that may lead to gang violence. The process often feels like an archaeological dig, carefully combing through Twitter conversations, studying emojis and hashtags, videos and images, to figure out the cues that often end with gunfire erupting.”

Patton notes that Chicago police have cited social media as a factor in the city’s surging violence. Patton writes, “Their diagnosis may sound to some like an attempt to duck responsibility for the failure of the local law enforcement system to interdict more illegal firearms or do more to stop repeat shooters before they injure or kill again. But having studied the phenomenon – known in the academic community as internet- or cyber-banging – I can tell you that the frequency with which young people use platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to hurl insults, taunt enemies, and brag about violent acts is playing a meaningful role in fueling retaliatory efforts between gangs and cliques in marginalized neighborhoods. It also has significant implications for gun violence prevention.”

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/05/03/is-twitter-the-leading-edge-of-predicting-chicago-violence/feed/0Latest Business Crime Menace: Social Engineering Fraudhttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/05/03/latest-business-crime-menace-social-engineering-fraud/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/05/03/latest-business-crime-menace-social-engineering-fraud/#respondWed, 03 May 2017 10:05:56 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=153890Social engineering fraud, an online risk that many businesses have had to deal with, is the hottest topic in crime insurance, according to Insurance Business magazine. A modern twist on an old scam, the fraud occurs when criminals troll social media platforms or company websites to gather information which they use to pose as an employee of the firm with vendors. Using information culled from the vendors, they then contact the company and request changes in bank routing protocols for payments, for example.

Greg Bangs of XL Catlin, a leader in global crime insurance coverage, said social engineering fraud is one of the most prevalent financial crimes that businesses face. He said many fall victim because payment changes are made with too little scrutiny. Bangs said, “And they submit this money to the new vendor and it’s only months later–when the real vendor says, ‘How come I haven’t been paid?’–that they realize they’re out all of this money.” He said the solution is internal training, “so you make sure that employees understand that these scams are not happening on occasion, but are happening all the time.”

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/05/03/latest-business-crime-menace-social-engineering-fraud/feed/0Cleveland Killer ‘Weaponized’ Social Mediahttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/04/19/why-cleveland-killer-weaponized-social-media/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/04/19/why-cleveland-killer-weaponized-social-media/#respondWed, 19 Apr 2017 13:03:55 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=148763Steve Stephens used a pistol to kill Robert Godwin Sr. on Easter Sunday. He used a cellphone and a Facebook account to weaponize the name of his estranged girlfriend in a misguided and public attempt to regain control over a woman and a life that had escaped him, reports Cleveland.com. The crime prompted a nationwide manhunt involving hundreds of law enforcement officers that ended yesterday morning, when Stephens shot himself as state troopers in Erie, Pa., approached his car.

Joy Lane, who Stephens described in a Facebook Live video before the Godwin shooting as “the love of my life,” would be subjected to death threats and even driven to apologize to the public, as if she, and not the gunman, is to blame. Though Stephens’ crime and videotaped manifestos shocked the world, they fell into a framework familiar to Jane Granzier of Cleveland’s Frontline Services, who argues that personal issues, perhaps untreated mental illness and a broken heart combine in a whirlwind of powerlessness to drive a man to unleash violence, blame the woman that he lost and take his own life. Also at play, Granzier said, is a societal stigma that makes people, particularly men, feel ashamed and less manly for seeking help for mental health treatment, a theory known in academic circles as “toxic masculinity.” “When you exacerbate that sense of helplessness by feeding yourself this narrative that you’re weak if you ask for help, it makes the problem worse,” she said. “On the contrary, it takes real strength to call somebody and ask for help.”

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/04/19/why-cleveland-killer-weaponized-social-media/feed/0Cleveland Facebook Murderer Kills Himself in Pennsylvaniahttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/04/18/manhunt-in-third-day-for-cleveland-facebook-killer/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/04/18/manhunt-in-third-day-for-cleveland-facebook-killer/#respondTue, 18 Apr 2017 16:40:22 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=148365The search for a suspect accused of shooting and killing a 74-year-old man Sunday in Cleveland and then posting a video of the coldblooded slaying on Facebook ended today when Steve W. Stephens died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Erie, Pa., reports GoErie.com. Authorities had issued an aggravated murder warrant for Stephens, 37. The Pennsylvania State Police said its officers spotted Stephens driving this morning. After a brief pursuit, Stephens shot and killed himself.

At about 2 p.m. Sunday, authorities said Stephens pulled up in his Ford Fusion on a road in East Cleveland and said in a Facebook-bound recording: “I found somebody I’m about to kill … “I’m about to kill this guy right here. He’s an old dude.” Stephens made the statement as he approached Robert Godwin Sr., who was reportedly collecting aluminum cans.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/04/18/manhunt-in-third-day-for-cleveland-facebook-killer/feed/0Expert Doubts Facebook Can Prevent Violent Postshttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/04/18/expert-doubts-facebook-can-prevent-violent-posts/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/04/18/expert-doubts-facebook-can-prevent-violent-posts/#respondTue, 18 Apr 2017 13:52:22 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=148367The massive growth of live-streaming everything from Little League games to a giraffe’s birth has developed a sinister edge as murderers, rapists and terrorists have found ways to broadcast video that tech companies such as Facebook are struggling to contain, reports the Washington Post. Alleged Easter Sunday killer Steve W. Stephens of Cleveland posted a video of the shooting on his Facebook page, then took to the Facebook Live streaming service to confess his actions in real time. Facebook disabled Stephens’s profile page more than two hours after the initial posting, but not before the video of the shooting spread across the social network and to other social media, including YouTube and Instagram. It has been viewed more than 150,000 times.

Facebook said it was investigating why it took so long to receive reports of the video and was reviewing its procedures. Live video of violent incidents, including suicides, beheadings and torture, have gone viral, with some reaching millions of people. This summer, Facebook faced criticism after a live stream of a disabled young man being tied up, gagged and slashed with a knife was up for 30 minutes. Last month, two Chicago teenage boys live-streamed themselves gang-raping a teen girl. “Bound up with doing all of these terrible things is the possibility of showing thousands, possibly millions, of people that you’re doing it,” said Mary Anne Franks, a University of Miami law professor. She expressed doubt that Facebook could adequately monitor live videos. “When it comes to Facebook Live as a product specifically, I don’t think it’s a solvable problem,” she said. After Facebook launched live video streaming last year, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said he wanted a product that would support all the “personal and emotional and raw and visceral” ways that people communicate.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/04/18/expert-doubts-facebook-can-prevent-violent-posts/feed/0How Police Tweets Created A D.C. Missing Girl Crisishttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/04/03/how-police-tweets-created-a-d-c-missing-girl-crisis/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/04/03/how-police-tweets-created-a-d-c-missing-girl-crisis/#respondMon, 03 Apr 2017 14:05:17 +0000https://livesite.qdoznr1-liquidwebsites.com/?p=143059It began with tweets from the Washington, D.C., police department in December: “CRITICAL MISSING” trumpeted an alert about a 13-year-old girl with a ponytail and pink slippers who was last seen outside her home. The siren echoed through cyberspace, retweeted 113 times, reposted by as many more on Instagram and Facebook. When the girl returned home hours later, that news was retweeted just 13 times, the Washington Post reports. A similar scenario began playing out daily, part of a new police initiative to tap the power of social media to locate missing children, a 21st-century version of the milk carton. The number of cases in D.C. was actually going down, but a police official thought publicity could help resolve cases faster. Police officials and Mayor Muriel Bowser were pleased. To a mayor who scrolls through Twitter at night, the attention seemed a good thing, especially because most of the youngsters were turning up safe – much as they always had — within a few hours or days.

Unbeknownst to Bowser and her team, the all-caps alerts, screaming out into cyberspace, was morphing into something else: a perceived epidemic of missing girls. NBA stars, rappers, Oscar winners and television personalities, each with millions of followers, began tweeting with the hashtag #missingdcgirls. “I want #missingdcgirls trending !!!!!” the rapper LL Cool J tweeted, a demand retweeted 8,700 times. The notion that young girls of color were disappearing without an uproar seemed scandalous, even racist. “Some of this viral media left people with the false impression that people were being abducted and that nobody cared and that was entirely wrong,” Bowser said. Last week, Bowser sought to calm the panic caused by a wayward social media campaign while recognizing the real desperation experienced by young people in poor neighborhoods. She vowed to keep publicizing each missing child on social media, saying the exposure is a net positive and that equity demands the disappearance of each child be treated the same.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/04/03/how-police-tweets-created-a-d-c-missing-girl-crisis/feed/0How ‘E-Responders’ Use Social Media to Stem Violencehttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/03/18/how-e-responders-use-social-media-to-stem-violence/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/03/18/how-e-responders-use-social-media-to-stem-violence/#respondSat, 18 Mar 2017 13:46:40 +0000http://thecrimereport.org/?p=136718“Cyberbanging,” young people provoking each other via social media, can turn deadly, escalating to threats, shootings, and reprisals, reports CityLab. The New York City Police Department is surveilling such threats, a tactic that distresses some city residents, especially when investigators pose as attractive young women to connect with the private accounts of suspected gang members. Some community members have also begun to monitor high-risk youth online, with an eye to calming conflicts and keeping them safe. A new report from the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City shows how community interventions in online disputes aim to stem real-world gun violence.

The commission, working with New York University’s Steinhardt School, launched a pilot program called “E-Responder” that trained 26 anti-violence street workers in five sites to recognize online risk signs—not just threats or pictures with guns, but also expressions of grief or emotional distress—and gave them tools to help. Does it work? There’s no good way to tell how many online conflicts would have turned to shootings, but the report says the training improved street workers’ ability to identify risky social media behavior. Ninety-seven percent of their interactions with youth led to positive outcomes, like de-escalating conflict and helping youth feel better able to change their own behavior. “Extensive psychological research has shown that the evidence-based strategies employed by E-Responder are correlated with reduced violence and positive behavior change,” said commission president Richard Aborn.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/03/18/how-e-responders-use-social-media-to-stem-violence/feed/0Facebook: Police Can’t Use Its Data For Surveillancehttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/03/14/facebook-police-cant-use-its-data-for-surveillance/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/03/14/facebook-police-cant-use-its-data-for-surveillance/#respondTue, 14 Mar 2017 12:33:25 +0000http://thecrimereport.org/?p=133290Facebook is cutting police departments off from a vast trove of data that has been increasingly used to monitor protesters and activists, the Washington Post reports. The move, which the social network announced yesterday, comes amid concerns over law enforcement’s tracking of protesters’ social media accounts in places such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore. It also comes at a time when chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says he is expanding the company’s mission from merely “connecting the world” into friend networks to promoting safety and community. Although the social network’s core business is advertising, Facebook, along with Twitter and Facebook-owned Instagram, also provides developers access to users’ public feeds. The developers use the data to monitor trends and public events.

The social networks have come under fire for working with third parties who market the data to law enforcement. Last year, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter cut off access to Geofeedia, a start-up that shared data with law enforcement, in response to an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union. Yesterday, Facebook updated its instructions for developers to say that they cannot “use data obtained from us to provide tools that are used for surveillance.” The company also said, in an accompanying blog post, that it had kicked other developers off the platform since it cut ties with Geofeedia. Until now, Facebook hasn’t been explicit about who can use information that users post publicly. This can include a person’s friend list, location, birthday, profile picture, education history, relationship status and political affiliation — if they make their profile or certain posts public. Police and federal agencies may still siphon people’s feeds in cases of national disasters and emergencies, Facebook officials said. It was unclear how Facebook would decide which emergencies and public events would warrant monitoring citizens’ data and which would constitute unreasonable “surveillance.”

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/03/14/facebook-police-cant-use-its-data-for-surveillance/feed/0Judge Rejects FBI Request for Fingerprints to Unlock iPhoneshttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/03/07/judge-rejects-fbi-request-for-fingerprints-to-unlock-iphones/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/03/07/judge-rejects-fbi-request-for-fingerprints-to-unlock-iphones/#respondTue, 07 Mar 2017 13:43:47 +0000http://thecrimereport.org/?p=130583In the latest skirmish over privacy in the cellphone age, a federal judge in Chicago rejected a law enforcement request to force potential targets in an ongoing investigation to provide fingerprints to unlock any iPhones or other Apple devices, reports the Chicago Tribune. The order by U.S. Magistrate Judge David Weisman concerned a request for a warrant to search a residence where investigators believed someone was using the internet to traffic images of child pornography. The prosecution filing seeking the search warrant on the FBI’s behalf remains under seal. The judge’s opinion said the government requested “the authority to compel any individual who is present at the subject premises at the time of the search” to provide a fingerprint or thumbprint needed to unlock an Apple device.

Weisman, a former federal prosecutor and FBI agent, wrote that the government hadn’t presented enough facts in its application that would justify such sweeping “intrusions,” including any specific information about those who might be living at the residence or their connection to the child pornography investigation. He also called out prosecutors over what he called dated boilerplate language often seen in search warrant affidavits dealing with technological issues, from referring to a Blackberry as a “Personal Digital Assistant” to suggesting that most people still use cables to download information. Weisman’s ruling comes a year after the high-profile battle between Apple and the FBI over the encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, Ca., terrorist attackers who killed 14 people and seriously wounded 22 others in 2015.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/03/07/judge-rejects-fbi-request-for-fingerprints-to-unlock-iphones/feed/0Justices Seem Likely To Side With NC Man on Facebook Usehttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/02/28/justices-seem-likely-to-side-with-nc-man-on-facebook-use/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/02/28/justices-seem-likely-to-side-with-nc-man-on-facebook-use/#respondTue, 28 Feb 2017 06:05:16 +0000http://thecrimereport.org/?p=127765Lester Packingham praised Jesus on his Facebook page and simultaneously committed a felony. His conviction may not stand for long, the Washington Post reports. A majority of the Supreme Court yesterday seemed prepared to strike down a North Carolina law that makes it a crime for a registered sex offender such as Packingham to access social media sites even years after they have served their sentences or completed probation. Packingham, then 21, pleaded guilty 15 years ago to having sex with a 13-year-old and received a suspended sentence. In 2010, he violated the state’s social media prohibition by posting a jubilant Facebook message about escaping punishment in traffic court: “Man God is Good! How about I got so much favor they dismissed the ticket before court even started? . . . Praise be to GOD, WOW! Thanks JESUS!”

Justice Elena Kagan was among several justices who indicated North Carolina had gone so far in restricting sex offenders’ use of the Internet that the state was violating First Amendment rights. Everyone knows that the president communicates via Twitter, she said, but so do all 50 governors, and members of Congress maintain accounts or Facebook pages as a way to connect with their constituents. “So whether it’s political community, whether it’s religious community, I mean, these sites have become embedded in our culture as ways to communicate and ways to exercise our constitutional rights, haven’t they?” Kagan asked N.C. Deputy Attorney General Robert Montgomery, who was defending the law. Montgomery agreed, but said the state wasn’t restricting everything. “This is a part of the Internet, but it’s not the entire Internet that is being taken away from these offenders,” he said. “They can still have their own blog. They can read blogs. They can do podcasts.”

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/02/28/justices-seem-likely-to-side-with-nc-man-on-facebook-use/feed/0Can States Bar Sex Offenders From Social Media?https://thecrimereport.org/2017/02/27/can-states-bar-sex-offenders-from-social-media/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/02/27/can-states-bar-sex-offenders-from-social-media/#respondMon, 27 Feb 2017 14:25:04 +0000http://thecrimereport.org/?p=127341Is your politically-charged Facebook post, an Instagram photo of your last vacation, or Snapchat account a vital, Constitutionally protected right, or a privilege that can be taken away? That’s a question the U.S. Supreme Court is grappling with today as it hears a case involving a North Carolina law that bars registered sex offenders from using some social media platforms where users under the age of 18 are allowed, reports the Christian Science Monitor. While the state argues that the law blocks sexual predators from gathering information on potential victims, the plaintiff counters that the sweeping ban constitutes an infringement of the First Amendment and puts those on the registry outside of political conversation.

The First Amendment says legislators “shall make no law” restricting speech, but courts have ruled many times that the right is far from absolute, particularly when the safety of others comes into play. Privately-owned social media platforms have found themselves straddling the line between allowing free expression on their platforms and keeping sites clear of particularly offensive and abusive communication or obscene material, especially anything that would involve abuse of children. Today’s case involves Lester Packingham, who is in a 30-year term on the sex offender registry for pleading guilty to having consensual sex with a 13-year-old girl he was dating at the age of 21. He said he did not know how old the girl was. He was then found guilty of having a Facebook account.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2017/02/27/can-states-bar-sex-offenders-from-social-media/feed/0Inmates Are Using Social Media to Organizehttps://thecrimereport.org/2017/01/13/inmates-are-using-social-media-to-organize/
https://thecrimereport.org/2017/01/13/inmates-are-using-social-media-to-organize/#respondFri, 13 Jan 2017 12:01:32 +0000http://thecrimereport.org/?p=110562State prison inmates plan a work strike Saturday in conjunction with a march in Washington to protest corporate food giant Aramark, which provides meals at more than 500 correctional facilities. Their means of organizing: social media. Planning for Saturday’s protest duplicates how inmates in 24 states used Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in September to stage a work strike on the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising to protest prison conditions, which they called “modern-day slavery,” reports Stateline.

“We connected from our social media platforms,” Bennu Hannibal, an inmate serving a life sentence for murder in Alabama, told Vice News, using a smuggled cellphone to conduct the interview. “All those platforms allowed us to connect with different people and different organizers from around the world.” In most states, prison officials want to prevent inmates from having easy access to the outside world via social media. They fear prisoners could use social media to stalk a former victim, run crime rings, threaten a witness, arrange contraband drops or find out personal information about prison guards and officials. “Social media is a problem,” said Bryan Stirling, director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections. “It should concern everybody across the country that this is happening. It’s the unfettered communication to the outside world that should scare everybody.” Prisoner advocates and civil libertarians disagree. They argue that bans on social media further alienate inmates already cut off from society and make a successful return more difficult.